Michael·H·Prosser

The Lima Peru "Uniting the Americas" Conference, August 3-5, 2006 (Michael
Prosser)

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From: Michael Prosser

A distinct advantage of attending conferences in countries foreign to
one's own is the rich culural texture which surrounds these events as
theoretical and practical case studies of intercultural communication.
For me recently, for example , my attendance at 7 conferences in
China, (2001, 2003, twice in 2004, twice in 2005, once in 2006), India (a
conference on the UN Convention of the Child, 2003), two conferences in
Russia, (2005, 2006), two Fulbrfight conferences in Greece, 2005, the
2006 ICA conference in Germany, and the 2006 Lima conference have not
only provided me an opportunity to be actively involved, but have
enriched my intercultural understanding.. In September, I will be
involved in the Shanghai Muncipality World Academic Conference on China
Studies, and will probably be engaged in at least two Chinese
conferences during 2007. For the 2006 Russian and ICA conferences, I
traveled with a former Chinese student, his first time out of China,
and thus very interculturally enriching for him and in which he adapted
very well culturally. Our total European travel was 36 days, with 7 days
connected to the Russian conference and 5 days related to the ICA
conference and visiting 10 countries, with two home stays at families
of former high international exchange students of mine. For the Lima
conference, my daughter Michelle Prosser, who has University of
Virginia BA and MA degrees in communication and owns her own consulting company,
and I first visited San Salvador, and then spent 7 days in Peru with
the "Uniting the Americas" conference as our focus. In each city, we
also rented a taxi for traveling outside of the capital.

The Lima conference was cosponsored by San Martin de Porres University,
the American Communicaation Association (ACA), and ICA, at the original
initiative of Peter De Caro and Tyrone Adams, Executive Director and
President of ACA.To the best of my knowledge, this is the first such
conference in Latin America that has been held bringing together
communication scholars and practitioners from both South and North
America. The primary program for the conference announces:"The Congress
of the Americas is an event that represents the major space of academic
exchange among professionals in social communication from the world. We
will analyze the present and future situation of the communications,
and its impact on social, political, and economic issues in the American
Continent." This is probably optimistic for any conference, but the
concept and actual workings of the congress follow the deductive
approach of romance languages of working from first principles to a
later more inductive approach with individual papers of those attending
the conference.

Following both a Latin American and European "congress" model, rather
than the typical North American "convention" or "conference" model,
each of the three days was devoted to a specific theme: August 3 to
technology, August 4 to intercultural communication, and August 5 to
public affairs. In SIETAR International's 1983 congress in San
Giminano, Italy, Europeans complained rather strongly about the
imposition of the American model and dominance, as did the Russians in
the 2006 Russian Communication Conference in St. Petersburg more
informally. In 1986, for SIIETAR International, we encouraged the
organizers of the Amsterdam congress to follow the European model,
which they did. This meant that each individual day had one or two full
themes. The 2000 and 2006 ICA conferences (Acapulco, Mexico and
Dresden, Germany) basically followed the North American model and there was some
considerable Informal grumbling about the format by participants from
outside the US at each conference. We have distincively contrasting
conference and congress models between North America and conferences or
congresses in Latin America and Europe.

The Chinese model, except for the Asian Education Foundation Forum last
October in Beijing, appears to have a single theme for the entire
conference, such as mass communication and journalism or language or
intercultural communication, and usually is a day shorter than the
conference needs for the number of papers, causing many later speakers
to have less than ten minutes for their presentations. In the Chinese
conferences, there is always very "high face"on the first day,
including a group photo. However a number of these conferences have disccouraged
students from active participation, except as volunteers or passive
observers and in one recent case, all of the students present from
several universities were not allowed to participate in the coffee/tea
breaks. One mass media and journalism conference that I attended in
Beijing had very "high face" for the international scholars from
Australia, the UK, and US on the first day except for those of us
actually living in China, and on the second day took all of these
international guests to see the Forbidden City and Great Wall, making
the second day no longer an international conference, but only a
Chinese and "low face" one.

Although the North American organizers for the Lima Congress were
initially clearly following the North American model, the Peruvian
planners reorganized it to the Latin American model, giving very high
"Face" to distinguished speakers, mostly from Latin America during the
mornings, with written questions from audience members for the
panelists. The keynoter typically had 2 or 3 questions asked and the
other panelists, one each. In the afternoons, lunch and a long siesta
period daily, the three concurrent sessions from 1600 to 2000 pm
provided opportunities for individual presentations in groups of four
for an hour and fifteen minute sessions, typically with a respondent
for each session. However, a number of the North American session chairs
and respondents, and in several cases even scheduled presenters, were not
there or on the last day had gone sightseeing out of Lima. The same
problem was reported for the August, 2006 San Antonio conference on
intercultural communication. Often in conferences outside of North
America, North American presenters in large numbers simply fail to
appear. The final evening sessions for the third day of the Lima
Congress had few audience members in each of the three simultaneous
sessions over the four hours and several announced presenters were not
there. Orginally, a Peruvian dance troup was supposed to end the
conference, with a small final reception, but the dance troup got
rescheduled to the luncheon on August 5, and no reception was held,
causing the Congress to end, in T. S. Elliot's words, with "a whimper
rather than a bang."

At the Lima congress, on August 2, we were guests at the Peruvian
Congress (parliament which did not function for a long period during
President Fugiama's tenure), and then the federal Museum of the
Inquistion, which was supported by the Spanish monarchy in Peru and two
other Latin American countries from the late 1500's to the early
1800's. In the evening, delegates had a tour of the very advanced radio and
television facilities at San Martin de Porres University and a
generous welcoming reception there, hosted by the College dean with speeches by
the dean, Sam Luna for ICA, and Tyrone Adams for ACA.

Rita Kirk, an expert in corporate communications served as the keynoter
for August 3 with the day's theme, technology, "Brave New Media: Brave
New World." Overtones of Huxley and Orwell were included. Both South
and North American communication experts participated each with a
fifteen minute commentary, followed by several written questions
addressed to various members of the panel. On August 4, the keynoter
was Raul Vargas, a well known Perusvian tv journalist with a daily TV
audience of millions, "Communications in a Multicultural Continent:
Myths, Contrasts and Realities." On the final day, two keynoters
included: Carlos Alberto Montaner, a Peruvian writer and journalist,
and Vice President of Liberal International, "Moral Bases of the
Journalism,"and Alicia Casermeiro, Director of the Social Communication
Institute, Joujrnalism and Advertisement of the Argentina Cathollic
University. All of the keynote speeches were very profound, with themes
like technological determinism, social justice, peace, liberation
theology, and global poverty vs. wealth, and comments being made
about the situations in Irran, Iraq, and the Middle East. The commentaries
by panelists and several of the written questions, especially by Latin
American scholars, were very thought provoking and insightful.

Over all, the Congress was a very strong first collaboration and very
beneficial for discussing world problems in which both positive and
negative communication plays a major role, as well as a wide variety of
excellent papers by scholars from both South and North America. A core
group of South and North Americans agreed that a second biennial
congress will be held in the summer of 2008 in Mexico City.

Michael Prosser, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, College of English and
Intercultural Institute , Shanghai International Studies University
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